TOWARDS A GLOBAL ANTHROPOLOGY

2001

Anthropological Forum, 2013

In periods of hegemonic power there is a tendency for indigenous groups to be eradicated, assimilated , or turned into stigmatized minorities. Where hegemony weakens, the process is reversed with groups who were previously suppressed or assimilated reasserting their identities, cultures, and political claims on territorial sovereignty. The two processes are different phases of a historical cycle. The decline of Western hegemony provides a space for the rise of culturally-based identity movements, such as the Hawaiian and Maori sovereignty movements. Such movements in turn foster the emergence of new elites.

Man, 1993

With the occurrence of an armed secessionist movement on Bougainville, military coups in Fiji, and the growing momentum of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, it is clear that issues of tradition and identity in the Pacific can no longer be treated as the stuff of abstract and disinterested anthropological scholarship. To be sure, each of these events or movements has been about political and economic power, but like conflicts elsewhere in the world (eg, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, the Balkans, and the Caucasus) they have also been rooted in contested views of the past and in claims to separate and distinctive identities understood to be derived from the past. In the postmodern world, tradition and identity are supplanting modernist political ideologies in the discourse of conflict (see Kuper 1994; Escobar 1992; Melucci 1980). At roughly the same time as these political struggles have been taking place in the Pacific, anthropology has been going through some upheavals of its own. The very core of the modern discipline-fieldwork and ethnography-has come under a new critical scrutiny (see, eg, Clifford and Marcus 1986; Marcus and Fischer 1986). These changes in the discipline of anthropology are related to changes that have been taking place among the societies that anthropologists have traditionally studied. Anthropology developed as an attempt to understand human diversity, the dimensions of which became known to the west through its own global expansion. Anthropology matured as a discipline in the context of colonialism, and sometimes its practitioners were more than mere beneficiaries of the colonial order (Asad 1973). In the * * *

Journal of Sociology, 2025

Colonization, displacement and resistance At the heart of Global Networks of Indigeneity: Peoples, Sovereignty, and Futures (Carlson et al., 2023) is an honest recognition of how ongoing colonization has shaped, and continues to shape, the lives of Indigenous peoples. Whether it is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia, the Māori of New Zealand, Indigenous communities across Asia, or Indigenous peoples from the Pacific and beyond, the book unites these voices in their shared history and experiences of colonial enforced attempts of displacement, land dispossession, and cultural, gender and sexuality erasure with each chapter respectfully reminding the reader about 'communities that are diverse' and 'cannot be easily siloed apart' (Carlson et al., 2023, p. 180). However, what stands out in the book is its celebration of how Indigenous peoples globally, have not just survived but resisted and reasserted their sovereignty. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, for instance, continue to fight for their land rights and cultural heritage, challenging systems that seek to undermine their sovereignty. Māori communities are revitalizing their language and customs as a means of resisting cultural assimilation. Indigenous peoples in Asia, facing different colonial legacies, are still waging for rights and recognition and autonomy in their own lands. This resistance is particularly resonant in a global context where displacement and dispossession extend beyond the legacies of colonialism. The editors skilfully draw connections between the activism of Indigenous peoples, digital technologies and global networks, which has resulted in harmful systems of power, and control, whether through violence, conflict, environmental destruction, or economic forces. The same forces that sought to erase Indigenous cultures are at work in today's world, displacing millions and stripping people of their homes, rights and dignity. Yet, this book is a rich source of necessary possibilities that strengthen identities, relationships and connections.

Postcolonial Studies, 2020

I am writing to comment on Jonathan Friedman's recent article, "The Past in the Future: History and the Politics of Identity" (AA 94:837-859, 1992). In it Friedman sets a fine example of the type of analysis that is needed to understand the growing role identity politics plays in shaping world systems, as well as the role of global processes in shaping expressions of identity. As is the nature of such an endeavor, however, Friedman's conclusions are shaded by his limited sample (Greece and Hawaii). Here I present examples from my fieldwork with Maya cultural activists in Guatemala to make problematic some of Friedman's conclusions, and argue that perhaps Friedman is incorrect in correlating the current move toward global cultural dehomogenization with a decline of Western cultural hegemony. I must preface my comment with a note on the concept of Western culture. Friedman frequently uses the adjective Western (as in "Western identity and history" [p. 837], "the Western-dominated world" [p. 837], "Western hegemonic identity" [p. 840], and "Western social context" [p. 855]), but I am left unclear as to what level of abstraction he has in mind when referring to this arguably overused and ambiguous concept. In both social scientific and popular literature, the concept of Western culture is increasingly invoked to explain how global forces effect change in local contexts. While analyses of global systems require a high level of abstraction, scholars are too often lulled into treating the West as a homogenous entity that (re)acts similarly in situations of contact around the world.

2018

This study is to be published in a journal concerned with glocal studies, a field of sociology concerned with finding the ways in which global and local cultures interact and produce novel and often unexpected effects on one another. This approach could suffer from a bias of looking too hard for the exotic in local responses to global culture while failing to see the degree to which the local cultures are already working within the global norms established by Western powers. Such was the case with this study of Hawaiʼi. I came to the subject expecting to find a movement that defined Hawaiian identity by blood lineage and sought to enhance native rights by seeking justice within the existing social and political framework of American state and federal laws. Instead, I found the provisional government of a nation that is utilizing the framework of international law to end a foreign occupation that has existed since 1898 1). What is more, the Hawaiian state that existed in the 19th century had already transformed itself into a nation that had political structures similar to those of European nation states of the time. It was a multi-ethnic constitutional monarchy that had equal treaties with foreign powers, embassies, and international recognition as an independent state. The provisional governmentʼs use of international law to restore a dormant government and revive a disappearing culture should not be confused with indigenous

Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology, 2017